Practitioners in informal science settings--museums, after-school programs, science and technology centers, media enterprises, libraries, aquariums, zoos, and botanical gardens--are interested in finding out what learning looks like, how to measure it, and what they can do to ensure that people of all ages, from different backgrounds and cultures,…

Library and Information Science (LIS) as a discipline is guided by core values that emphasize equal access to information, freedom of expression, democracy, and education. Importantly, diversity and social responsibility are specifically called out as foundations of the profession (American Library Association, 2004). Following from this, there…

This article explores the questions to what extent educational research addresses library use in education and how the library can contribute to intercultural education. The focus is primarily on elementary education in Europe. Analysis of research publications was based on searches for peer-reviewed journals in international databases, literary…

School library and youth services professionals must develop and display a strong sense of cultural competence to effectively serve their patrons. Cultural competence is defined here as one's ability to understand the needs of populations different from their own. This paper reports on the perceptions of school library and youth services students…

All librarians, even those working one job, can become victims of burnout. Burnout can occur throughout the course of any career, and can pose a serious threat. On a daily basis, librarians help patrons fight their way through a haze of misinformation and disinformation. A good librarian is always on the ready, shifting gears from MLA source…

This documentation is for the revised file (Version 1b) of the National Center for Education Statistics' (NCES) Common Core of Data (CCD) National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS) for school year 2008-2009, fiscal year 2009 (FY 09). It contains a brief description of the data collection along with information required to understand and…

Twenty doctoral students from the School of Library and Information Sciences at the University of North Texas met in the summer of 2005 to complete a seminar and online course on "Online Information Services." The class offered the perfect research settings with 10 practicing school librarians and 10 practitioners from other areas of the library…

Based on more than twenty years' experience working to get boys interested in reading, the author now offers his first readers' advisory volume. With an emphasis on nonfiction and the boy-friendly categories of genre fiction, the work offers a wealth of material including: (1) Suggestions for how to booktalk one-on-one as well as in large groups;…

Few issues have galvanized the attention of U.S. citizenry in the past year as have environmental concerns, especially climate change, global warming, and greenhouse gas emissions. Degradation to our fragile planet continues unchecked with only limited actions on a national level. Children who absorb these concerns through television, classroom…

Winter 2007 marked an episode of high anxiety in the library science profession, when the latest Newbery winner, "The Higher Power of Lucky," triggered discussion about words and their suitability for young readers. It seems that the entire world now knows that the word "scrotum" appears on the first page of the book. School…

Over the past decade, educators have stressed the importance of creating exciting and intellectually stimulating environments where students are actively involved in constructing their own understandings. Whether it's designing a WebQuest to spark curiosity in science or establishing an oral history project to spur interest in local history,…

Co-author of the popular titles "Booktalking Bonanza" and "The Early Literacy Kit", Betsy Diamant-Cohen brings together 18 examples of successful outreach partnerships that children's librarians and administrators can adapt to their own situations. Contributors from the U.S and Canada explain how they partnered with schools,…

Library media specialists in Hawaii, like many of their colleagues elsewhere in the nation, are exploring ways to design and implement a type of student-oriented assessment that focuses on student performance. To tackle the issue of assessment in Hawaii's school library media centers, twenty-four K-12 library media specialists are currently…

Twenty-eight students (aged 9 to 17) freely explored a science Web site structured either in an outline (linear) format or "puzzle" (non-linear) format for 2.5 hours. Subjects then engaged in tasks involving locational memory and informational recall. The results indicate that presence of metacognitive skills was a necessary but not sufficient…

This article provides descriptions of four new science and technology encyclopedias that are appropriate for inclusion in upper elementary and/or middle school reference collections. "The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Weather" (Stern, Macmillan Reference/Gale), a one-volume encyclopedia for upper elementary and middle level students, is a…